A Case Against Self-deception
It is not uncommon to hear expressions like “you are lying to yourself”, “do not deceive yourself”, and alike. And every time these expressions occur, it seems to be evident in what they mean. That is, this happens in such a fashion that we just do not even make a pause to wonder whether such kind of statements make any sense. Yet, once one starts analyzing their meaning, some fundamental contradictions seem to arise. What is the main contradiction in regard to the idea of deceiving oneself?
Let us start by saying that according to our usage of language it seems that there are two types of deception. The one that occurs in respect to others and the one that occurs in respect to onelsef. Now, as far as I am concerned, historically speaking the first type of deception was conceived first, whereas the second meaning came about afterwards as a sort of metaphor of the first one. In this regard, what do we mean and imply when it is said that someone deceives someone else? Under this meaning to deceive necessarily implies two subjects. The one that deceives and the one that is deceived. The deception, according to this conceptualization, is only possible if at the same time the one that deceives is aware that it deceives and the one that is deceived is unaware of being deceived. Otherwise, deception disappears. So, for example, if person A realizes both that the supposedly golden ring that person B sold her is actually not made out of gold and that, what is more, person B knew about this fact when selling the ring, then the deception in which person A has been living in respect to the supposedly golden ring is gone, since in this deception case the one that was deceived is now aware of the deception. Of course,this does not change the fact that the ring was sold as if it were made out of gold.
Let us see another example. Let us say that person A holds the view that cheating to one’s partner amounts to not loving that person. Yet person A is constantly cheating to her partner at the same that affirms to him that she loves him. If her partner finds out eventually about her cheatings, he would stop living in deception in respect to the statement that she loves him, and, therefore, deception in that aspect would be gone.
As can be seen, we could continue giving more examples of deceaving someone else and in all of these cases it would apply the condition established: the deceiver must be aware of the deception and at the same time the deceived must not be aware of the deception. That being said, what about the idea of deceiving oneself? Could we apply the conceptual elements implied in the idea of deceiving someone else to the idea of deceiving oneself?The answer is NO. Unless we assume that it is possible that in every human being there exists two selves, it does make sense to talk about deceiving oneself; at least not in the strictest sense. Let us then see how it would look like the picture if we tried to apply the condition of deceiving someone else to deceiving oneself.
First of all, we need a deceiver and a deceived. And in order for the deception to exist, the deceiver must be aware of it, whereas the deceived must not be aware of it. So in the case of the idea of deception of oneself there should also be two subjects: the deceiver and the deceived. The question that should be raised in this regard is then, how could one human being be at the same time both aware and not aware of a deception in respect to something? That is, certainly, impossible, for, otherwise, it would yield an overt contradiction. In other words, if someone is aware that something is false, or at least believes so, that same individual cannot not be aware that that something is false at the same time. So the aformentioned co-existence of the deceiver and the deceived within the self of the human being is an idea that cannot be fashioned unless some sort of inconsistency or contradiction is admitted.
Now some people might try to address the contradiction claim about the deception of oneself in saying that it could be possible that there is some sort of subconscious mind that could either deceives us or be deceived by us and, therefore, since the subconcious mind would be part of the self, it would seem that it could be said that the self of the human being is deceiving itself. However, such claim would not make any sense, since such supposedly subconscious mind cannot have by definition any consciousness at all and, in this regard, could not be a deceiver neither a deceived, for any of these concepts require consciousness. Thus, for instance, when someone says that person A might be subconsciously deceiving herself, that does not make sense, since in order for that to happen the subconcious part would need to be aware of the deception, and, as has been said, such situation is impossible. On the other hand, dealing with the supposedly subconsious mind as if it were another self within the self amounts to saying that there are two I’s in every human being. This idea, although picturesque, cannot be consistently sustained. It actually makes much more sense to hold the view that within the self there are different aspects, and one of these could be the subconscious mind, but from that it does not follow that this latter would have a self by itself. Otherwise, we would be sustaining some sort of homunculus theory of the mind which historically speaking has already been proved to hold many inconsistencies.
According to the aforementioned, does there exist self-deception at all? In my opinion, following the argumentation previously given, the idea of self-deception is conceptually an impossible. This, however, does not mean that there is not exist the phenomenon to which the idea of self-deception is applied. Such phenomenon does indeed exist, but, as far as I am concerned, is disfigured through the idea of self-deception. In other words, such idea does not make justice to the phenomenon. As we know, sometimes language disfigure what we may call the reality through inadequate conceptualizations. In my view, the phenomenon that underlies the idea of self-deception could be better described as an attempt to overlook certain aspects of reality. The development of this idea would require, however, another article, for this time the present one has already exceeded its first pretentions.
